Absolute Gadget

Review: Palm Centro smartphone

Written by Matt Chapman Saturday, 17 May 2008 13:17

One million Americans can’t be wrong, can they? That’s how many Palm Centros have zoomed out of US stores and into the hands of mostly young users, if the marketing bods are to be believed. So what’s this iccle PDA-type smartphone actually like to use?

The first thing that strikes you is the keyboard. While it might seem like the keys are placed annoyingly close together, the individual buttons actually benefit from being slightly raised. This makes them distinct enough to get up a good typing speed, even if you’re unlikely to use the Centro to bash out your life story.

Our only real annoyance here is with what we’ll call the ‘Control’ and ‘Capital’ keys. The ‘Control’ key lets you type the second symbol placed above a key’s regular function, while the ‘Capital’ key makes letters big. The way our brain works, a key with an arrow pointing up means you’ll be choosing that second smaller symbol sitting over the regular letter. However, that’s not the case. The key with the arrow is the ‘Capital’ key and it’s actually the white key that toggles the ‘Control’ action. Even a month’s worth of daily use couldn’t get us out of this bad habit and much money was poured into the office swear box because of it.

Thankfully, the keyboard is backed up by a touchscreen, which allows for a mix of controls. The screen is slightly recessed into the device which should help protect it from rubbing up against things in your pocket. That depression did collect dust and dirt quite easily, though.

Being a Windows Mobile user (no choice really when your contacts are all stored in Outlook) we were eager to see what the Palm OS could do in its most modern form. Unfortunately, like so many other phones we test out, the software just can’t handle importing an address book in the exact same format it appears in Microsoft Outlook. This lack of compatibility is extremely annoying when you consider Outlook is an established piece of software and has been around for many years. OK, so we store our entries in a non-standard way (Company name - Name of Contact), but why is that so hard to transport?

To try and get around this issue we exported our contacts as a file in a number of formats and tried to import them into Palm’s software. However, it made no difference and we were still left with jumbled contacts: some with the contact name but no company; some the same but vice versa; and a few with no name at all!

That wasn’t the end of the Centro’s syncing crimes, though. When it connects with Outlook, it makes changes to the way calendar items are displayed within the Microsoft program. For example, periods that were previously shown as full weeks were split up into individual days. Technically the information is still there and nothing was removed, but as we like to view our entries as whole weekly or weekend events this was again very annoying.

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At least access to most of the services was extremely easy thanks to a dedicated tab on the touchscreen. The usual options such as voicemail, messaging, email, etc could all be found and quickly accessed here. The 1.3-megapixel camera and pTunes media application were also found here, as was a web browser link and a very useful dedicated Google link. It’s a shame the link to Google Maps was hidden on the second page of the deeper Home menu.

Curiously, it’s impossible to turn the phone completely off. The marketing suits at the Centro’s UK launch assured us this wouldn’t have an adverse affect on the battery as it consumes so little power in the background. We have to admit it didn’t seem to run things down and we didn’t find ourselves charging it more than other similar smartphone models. And don’t worry, it’s possible to put the phone in plane safe mode if you don’t want to have to pull the battery out every time you’re boarding.

As well as a very decent battery life, the device also handled all the tasks we threw at it very well. The 312MHz processor made sure we never hit a whirling circle of loading doom the whole time we used it.

Its worst problem by far - at least on the model we tested - was the fact it may crash when someone calls you. OK, so it’s a quick turnaround to dunk the battery out of the back and reboot everything, but this is still a major flaw. Oddly, if we’d been using the Centro just before a call it never crashed. If it had been sitting in our pocket unloved for a good few of hours it was almost certain to do this. A quick Google search doesn’t throw this up as a widespread problem, so perhaps it was just our model. But having switched to the Palm Centro for a month from our regular phone, it was this issue which made us switch back to the HTC Touch.

Overall, despite being Palm’s smallest and cutest device to date, this is still a fairly average entry to the smartphone market. However, the low price point of £199 RRP without a contract will no doubt help get it into the hands of users.

VERDICT: 5/10

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Specifications
Display: 320x320-pixel Transflective colour screen; supports 16-bit colour (up to 65K colours)
Radio: Quad band (850/900-1800/1900) GSM/GPRS/EDGE Class 10
Platform: Palm OS 5.4.9
Bluetooth: Wireless Technology Version 1.2
Memory: 64MB available user storage
Camera: 1.3 megapixels with 2 x digital zoom and video capture
Battery: Removable 1150mAh, lithium-ion up to 4 hours talk time, up to 300 hours standby time
Expansion: microSD card (up to 4GB supported, sold separately)
Connector: Multi-connector
Dimensions (L x W x D): 107.2mm x 53.5mm x 18.6mm
Weight: 124 grams
Colors: Black
System Requirements: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X v10.2-10.4
Software on device: Bluetooth, Calculator, Camcorder, Camera, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Memos, Documents to Go Professional Edition 10, Google Mobile Maps, HotSync, My Centro, Phone, Pics and Video, PocketTunes, Quick Tour, VersaMail 4.0, Voice Memo, Web (Blazer 4.5), World Clock, Solitaire and Palm Files.